Jifl> I still think you haven't got the point of what is being
Jifl> discussed. As I've mentioned a few times now, your concerns
Jifl> are to do with initialising by C++ constructor. While I
Jifl> think the risks of this change are rather theoretical, the
Jifl> effects on setting the printf function are not, and that's
Jifl> the source of API breakage when cyg_flash_init disappears in
Jifl> future.

Uh, excuse me. If you look again at the email I sent last Friday, I
clearly discussed both the constructor priority issue and the API
issue. I concluded that keeping things exactly as they were did not
involve any API compatibility issues.

Then how can you retain the semantics of setting the printf function in
cyg_flash_init if the API for doing so is deprecated? What is the point of
calling a new API official, telling people to start coding to it, and
deprecating it immediately?

The correct thing to do in a future release is to keep
cyg_flash_init() exactly as it was before your check-in, but marked
deprecated.

[snip]

cyg_flash_init() would continue to exist indefinitely and would
continue to take a printf function pointer. There is no API breakage.
However people who bother to look at the compiler warnings would
figure out that they could save a few bytes of code.

Your change to cyg_flash_init() has broken API compatibility for every
flash-using application that has used the V2 flash branch since it was
created.

But as you yourself said, the V2 flash branch is a development branch, and
rightly so. There has been no release from it, nor has it been
release-worthy. Anyone working against it faced a large struggle because
it was interdependent on the rest of the tree which was ancient. And as we
know from eCosCentric work, a lot of the redboot stuff was broken anyway,
and we spent a lot of time fixing much of it, which has only gotten
integrated as part of the merge to trunk.

I have no intention of retaining compatibility with an obsolete -cum- work
in progress tree. What would be the point of that.

It has also broken API compatibility for every application
that has used the V2 flash API since that was merged into the anoncvs
trunk.

That is measured in days, and the sole object of the import was in order
to create eCos 3.0. Calling that tiny window significant for the purposes
of backward compatibility beggars belief. Are we to be compatible with all
intermediate states of the repository?

It has also broken API compatibility for every eCosPro release
for the last four years or so.

I'm only wearing a maintainer hat here. Please do the same.

The flash v2 API has never been released and there are no backward
compatibility implications. eCos 3.0 is what cements the API. What I am
concerned about is forward compatibility. I would rather have the API
completely straight, including removal of cyg_flash_init. But since you
are resistant to that, I have compromised with something which at least
allows it to be #define'd away to nothing.

Before now there hasn't _been_ a cyg_flash_init function to be compatible
with. And I've ensured that the legacy API's flash_init() DTRT.